Pick Six Week 7: Snoozefest

As expected the Top 25 ate their cupcakes without any problems. The six teams that lost moved down and everybody else moved up around them. Michigan, Georgia Tech, Illinois and Arizona State all stayed in the poll while Baylor and Texas dropped out of the rankings. The teams that won or were on a bye moved up to replace them without much excitement. The only big jumps in the poll were Kansas State getting up to 12th and Michigan State jumping from 23rd to 15th.

The AP voters did decide that Georgia is good enough to be ranked again. After starting out the season 0-2, they’ve won 5 in a row and look like the leader in the SEC East now that Marcus Lattimore is done at South Carolina. There are now 2 teams from Group D ranked, the most since week 2.

Washington became the 12th team to enter the polls after starting the season unranked. That should lift the spirits of the 9 people who forgot Jake Locker graduated and picked Washington in their ballot. I hope they don’t get too excited though because the Huskies are about to get beat by Stanford.

Individual Ballot Analysis

Willhouse is in first place for the third week in a row and the second week in sole possession of the lead. In 2nd place 30rackchamp rode Michigan State and Washington up from 53rd place last week. (Is 30rack a play on 30 Rock and Rackham? Just 30 Rock? Something totally different? Enquiring minds want to know.)

After 6 weeks of first place being within 6 points of the perfect ballot, that mythical prize is pulling away. The perfect ballot is the same this week as last: LSU, Oklahoma State, Wisconsin, Michigan State, West Virginia and Clemson. That’s worth 111 points while Willhouse has only 97 points since he didn’t pick Michigan State. 97 points is the highest point total of the season.

Judging Your Pick

MGoBlog seemed to have done a good job of making their picks. For the first 6 weeks of the season the MGoBlog median and mean were higher than what a randomly picked ballot would expect to earn. People who read about Michigan football for hours every day had a good knowledge of the wider world of college football.

Week 7 politely steps in and says that we actually have no more idea of what we’re talking about than a bunch of monkeys.

Random Ballot

54

MGoBlog Median

54

MGoBlog Mean

55

A picture of the author at his desk.

Games to Watch

Not as many terrible cupcakes as last week but there still aren’t a lot of elite matchups. The daytime is full of semi-interesting to terrible games with the most relevant games on at night.

#20 Auburn at #1 LSU - 3:30 on CBS

USC at Notre Dame - 7:30 pm on NBC

#6 Wisconsin at #16 Michigan State – 8:00 pm on ESPN

#25 Washington at #8 Stanford – 8:00 pm on ABC

The winner of USC and Notre Dame is almost guaranteed to be ranked next week. This week’s “also receiving votes” is #26 Penn State, #27 Notre Dame, #28 USC. With a good win over a decent opponent either Notre Dame or USC is going to take the spot of whichever team at the bottom of the poll loses.

The other games might be good games but more likely they are going to be beatdowns.